


Rose Quartz Caterpillars

by SuperiorDimwit



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: Character exploration and development, F/M, Fairy Tale Style, life-altering events
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:56:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3535361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperiorDimwit/pseuds/SuperiorDimwit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All that lives, grows. All that lives, dies. All that lives births new life, and all that dies nurtures it. He knew this, she knew this; and yet, neither of them could have foreseen what happened. (Story collab with SkyHearts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Once upon a time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Ao no Exorcist.

Once upon a time, the story ended.

Moored to nameless soil it fed a whisper to the living walls, and they buried it within. Buried it deep.

Hunger, they know. Wait, they know.

Purpose, they have no use for.

Maybe there was purpose once, when the compass points knew where to find them. Maybe there was purpose, but it has been forgotten. They have been forgotten; by the world, by its people, by their own creator.

Now,

how about another fairy tale?


	2. Drops

Days fall like water drops in rusty rain barrels. All alike. All swallowed in the mass of one glassy eye that stares indifferently at heaven, waiting.

Waiting for something other than a drop of rain; a sunlight tear, a fallen star, a whispered word to stir the dust.

One such drop came; a day, quite the same as every other, except not.

It began when the tips of her toes found the soft maws of her slippers. (a present from Baa-chan when she was twelve) It began when she brushed her hair and handcuffed it with clips. (cupcake ones and lollipops, she and Paku-san had bought matching pairs) It trailed her feet like surface ripples when she did her morning round and bowed to all her friends.

_how do you tell when a story begins?_

"Good morning Hoshi-san!"

A smattering of drops, an offering to one that thrives on thirst. Haworthias are small things, tough things, easy to grow and hard to kill.

"Good morning Momo-san!"

Shiemi would greet them all in turn, every potted friend she fed on her pilgrimage through the old house, like they were all kamidana to be honoured and tended. That story had begun with Hoshi, whom she gave greetings in place of water in his winter fasting; she didn't want him to feel forgotten. Her grandmother had seen it, seen everything, seen things that only grandmothers with sunshine eyes will see; and spoken things that only grandmothers can speak.

Did not the other plants also want a morning greeting?

Shiemi had been little then, heart bigger than her body; bigger than the red watering can she had to carry with both hands when it was full. Her face had been that same red colour when her grandmother's smiled inquiry had landed on it.

_no one wants to be forgotten_

Shiemi never does. She loves with gentle fingers, everyone and everything. She pours her love in words to water the world, gathers sunlight in her eyes to warm and soothe and nourish all they shine upon. She greeted all of them, and they loved her like a mother, like a father, like the sun itself.

The sick and wounded have their special wing, conservatory turned infirmary just past the backdoor frame. She goes there last – guardian, healer – weaving deftly past the crates stored there for the shop. A place of pungent smells, it is. A place where all kinds of things come to hide from winter's bite. Shiemi found a rat there, once; flaking fur and three good legs to limp on. She left a plate of breakfast scraps for him each morning, until that morning came when the meal from yesterday was still in place and Nezumi-san was nursing larvae in his gut.

Shiemi still leaves scraps of breakfast at his garden grave.

"How are you feeling today, Nana-san?"

The honeysuckle sapling nods, demure, as her steps make the wooden flooring sway beneath it. It thanks her for the water, for the hands that scan its sickly foliage so gently.

"Don't worry, you're going to be alright. We just need to get these meanies off you, Nana-san. You don't seem to have any today but we have to be sure, right? This might hurt a little – I don't know, but if it does I'm sorry."

On top of leaves and under leaves, in the soil and on the stems. Each stipule where leaves spring forth receives its due attention, receives all the love and care those hands can give. The ones she finds (plump, green little plant-killers) she crushes, face an irate puff of anger.

No one harms Shiemi's friends.

Lastly, then, the special medicine: soft soap and denatured alcohol. Shiemi sprays Nana's tender vines root to tip, humming soothing lullabies to ease the sting. She knows what it is to be a wilting plant in need of help to grow; and grown she has. With the help from her new friends she has grown, from a shy bud held in shade to a flower unafraid to face the sun. She's able to help them, now. She's able to do things for them now, as they have done for her.

Shiemi thinks of the ghost boy in the amusement park (little pervert!) and smiles. She was able to help him.

She thinks of Paku (sweet sister!) and the ghoul wound that almost necrotized her tissues. She was able to help her, too. She _saved_ her. (something blossoms in her chest and she wonders if this is what flowers feel when they burst their buds in spring) Yuki-chan praised her, even! Yuki-chan, sweet Yuki-chan who is so strong and smart. Shiemi wants to be like him and Rin. Rin…

When Shiemi thinks of Rin her eyes fill up with water.

_drops in rusty rain barrels, all alike_

She was horrible to Rin. A selfish girl who wanted to be his friend without thinking of how he felt at all, no better than an aphid leeching on a plant. No, not an aphid: a weed. Shiemi wants to be a weed, a stubborn little dandelion with roots that bury deep and sprout anew when cut. A weed that burrows through asphalt and concrete. A weed that stands up on its own and is _strong_.

But she did help Rin.

A smile flickers on Shiemi's lips, not sure it can belong there yet brave enough to try. She did help Rin. She helped him be strong. Helped him believe in himself and break out of the magic prison.

_he was always strong, he just needed to believe_

The smile dims, blocked by cloudy thoughts that smell the rain behind her eyes when truth pierces the illusion. Rin was always strong. Shiemi was never strong.

_useless_

She grasps for light to chase the clouds away, thoughts to dam the rain; something to deny the truth. Shiemi hugs herself, clutches kimono colours that shine so bright and hide her monochrome identity.

"It's alright. Keep smiling. I'll… I'll catch up with them, one day", she thinks (prays) but her voice is trembling.

_but they move ahead so fast_

She doesn't want to think it. She doesn't want to, but it's there. Everyone is far ahead and the maelstrom eats her driftwood hopes as the distance to them grows, grows so much faster than she does…

Izumo.

The maelstrom roar fades on her ears and she knows how to breathe again. Yes, she saved Izumo: not once but twice. Shiemi could help her even if Izumo is so much stronger.

Her reflection stares back breathlessly, entrapped in conservatory glass. Shiemi breathes herself in slowly, flaxen hair and big green eyes that make her look so childish; breathes her shoulders down and loosens her grasp on the kimono folds. She saved Izumo. There is a deep blue bruise necklacing her throat (a bathroom spirit's parting gift) that says she saved her friend. It's still sore to touch but Shiemi does it all the same. It's proof.

Proof that she's working hard and helping people.

_but is it enough_

Shiemi pleads it to be enough. Pleads that if only she tries hard enough, works hard enough and does _everything she can_ she will catch up with them one day and not… not be useless...  
 _  
what good is it to treat a plant for aphids if the roots are weak and useless_

A plant with weak roots won't grow strong. It doesn't matter how well you water it, how well you fertilize it, how much you love it. It will grow healthy only to fall ill again. It will always be a burden to others. Cling on others.

_parasite_

"I want to be a weed…" Her voice is a murmur in the conservatory; a quivering leaf, a yellow-spotted plant sick with disease and no one there to cure it. "I don't want to be a parasite…"

The honeysuckle sapling has no comfort to offer her.

* * *

Smiles are people's sunlight – the words belonged to Baa-chan while she lived. Now, they are Shiemi's. People need smiles like plants need sun. People need smiles to know someone cares about them, so Shiemi smiles. She cares about all her friends.

_and yet she fails them_

Baa-chan's garden became an orphan when Shiemi chose to go to school in the Academy. There are three creaky wooden steps from the conservatory to the garden and each one laments its quiet suffering. What meets her is a mass grave, parched leaves tossing death rattles in the breeze. Baa-chan's garden… Guilt explodes in Shiemi's chest, a violent detonation tossing guilt and anger and sadness like shrapnel shards and she rushes to the rain barrel to fill her can up. It isn't nearly big enough but the plants need water and they need it _now_. Shiemi rushes back and forth between the flower beds and the rain barrel, the vegetable garden and the rain barrel, the herb garden and reaching as far as her arm can go into the almost empty barrel.

It's not her mother's fault. She said she would look after the garden when Shiemi was in school but mother needs to run the shop, too. (Shiemi knows that) She said she would look after the garden when Shiemi was doing her homework but mother doesn't know about plants like Baa-chan did. (Shiemi knows that)

Only Shiemi knows plants like Baa-chan did. And she abandoned them.

_undependable_

Shiemi bites her tears back.

_pathetic_

Her hands are trembling around the watering can and the shame is burning through her eyes like acid. Crying like a child instead of doing something when her friends need help.

_pathetic_

Shiemi shakes her head, shakes her tears away. There is no time to be crying when there is work to do.

"Nii-cha-" Shiemi halts her words, eyes bright and big and childish; big enough to take in all the dead and dying in the garden. This is her doing. This is her failure to amend. To restore her peace with the garden she must do it properly.

* * *

_There are… places._

_Places where the air is sworn to secrecy and time plays hide and seek in undertaker gown. Places where things are buried by those wishing to forget._

_Hunger, they know. Wait, they know._

_They have waited a long, long, time._

_Nothing wants to be buried. Nothing wants to be forgotten._

_And so, one way or another, those places will be found._

_Those things will be unearthed._

_And those that did not want to be forgotten_

_will bury those that did not want to remember._

"Baa-chan used to go here." Shiemi's voice is thin, a spider string glinting in the sunlight of an unknown place. "She said the peat moss was best when it came from here."

"Nii…" her familiar confirms with hesitation, clinging tightly to her hair. Birds have always unnerved him (they think he's edible) and the busy foliage says this forest houses many.

Baa-chan left few material possessions, but she did leave behind a key. (an old, corroded one; could be iron but impossible to tell) It smelt cold, felt cold, and the dilapidated root cellar it led to is the same. Shiemi stepped through it into the forested area of the Academy. Where, she does not know. She only knows that these cedar trees are older than any she has ever seen, and that they anchor sky to earth with their majestic height and roots that touch the bedrock.

Without really thinking, Shiemi bows before following the fragrant trail into the cathedral forest.

Peat loves water, traps it like a sponge and turns lakes into bogs. A clearing where the ground is wet and no trees grow; that is what she looks for, among the monolithic trunks, and before long she has found it. The cedars part reverently around it and form a heavy baldachin above. The bog preens, tranquil like a Buddha, as sunlight reaches gently through the branches to pour rippling patches in its little water ponds. Breezes in the cedar crowns make them sway, sets the light to dance over the glinting, glowing bog. Shiemi rubs the iron key with her thumb, feels its crusty surface, thinking she must come more often to a place this beautiful. The bog has a nice smell, too – earthy, rich, and a lot of cedar.

Harvested and decomposed, peat can be mixed with soil to conserve water, to keep nutrients from washing away; and, because it is acidic enough to prevent bacterial growth, the fresh moss can also halt decomposition and be used for…

Dressing wounds.

Shiemi's heart grows cold then. Cold and still, hoping it won't be heard.

The Earth King sits at the edge of the bog. The _Earth King_. He wears nothing from the waist up, clothes left on the ground in a sticky, ragged heap of red. Lacerations bore into him from every angle, as though he had been stabbed repeatedly with spears. Lace of splintered bone trims the holes into his ribcage, and though he does his best to bear the pain of pushing ribs back in there come growls and grunts that tears Shiemi's heartstrings raw.

The poor thing can barely move enough to press the moss against his wounds.

" _He needs help…_ "

But he is dangerous. He's a demon – a demon _king_.

But he's hurt. He's in pain. He might not attack in this state, or so Shiemi hopes, because the words are past her lips before she knows it.

"Uhm, excuse me…?"

Shiemi's heart has never pounded so hard before. The Earth King turns his head towards the sound, and in an instant the blue eyes - dull, like blades that have cut down too many enemies to count - have found her. Her heart keeps pounding fiercely, every muscle tense like steel wire in case she has to bolt and run.

And the demon does nothing. He stares, and that is it. That is all. He sits like a statue, not a muscle moving in his half-naked body. Shiemi hardly dares to blink (perhaps that is what he's waiting for) or breathe or even, even…

Until she can't bear it any longer.

"I-I noticed you're hurt, so… I… I can help you bandage it!"

Her voice is too loud, forced through a throat too tight for anything but screaming. Shiemi almost slaps her hands over her mouth but her limbs shake too violently for her command.

"I don't need help." As soon as he has said it, the bandage on his arm slips down in a cataract of blood. He doesn't even seem to notice.

Shiemi isn't sure if she should point out to him that help does seem like a good idea.

"Nii!"

"Ah, N-Nii-chan…!"

Nii-chan hops down from her shoulder, braving the spongy moss to where the Earth King sits and greets him. That seems to be what he is doing, at least. A stream of chirps and trills pass from the greenman, and the Earth King appears to listen.

"Can you… understand what he says?" Her voice is still loud in her head – or is that the pounding of her heart? Shiemi can't tell.

"Yes."

Time passes again. So slowly it makes her skin crawl. So slowly it might just stretch too thin and break. Shiemi doesn't want to tread nervously on the spot but she will start doing it if he doesn't say anything soon. Doesn't he want to tell her what Nii-chan says…? Is he considering whether to attack her or let her go? What does that indifferent stare mean?

"So, uhm, what is he saying?" she asks, when the silence is just about to crush her.

The Earth King speaks a single word: "Leave."

Electricity sparks through her system, a primal urge to _run_ and not look back. But…

_undependable_

Shiemi steels herself, takes a deep breath the way she did before she entered Rin's demonic prison. She must be strong.

"Ah… Can… Can I just take some of the moss with me, then?" She dares to cast a glance away from him, at the moss she came to fetch. Her nerves are burning in her skin, flooded with adrenaline and screaming in her ears but _she has a mission to fulfil_. "I need it for my garden, it looks terrible now that my mom is taking care of it most of the time, a-and… I need the moss so it can stand draught better."

The Earth King looks at her. His head tilts to the side a fraction, maybe less, but it's a _reaction_ and Shiemi wonders, breath hitching, if she said the wrong thing. (if it will be the last thing she says)

"You're a gardener?"

His face says nothing, but there is something in his voice that could be curiosity.

"Mh." She bobs her head to nod, too nervous now to speak.

"I thought you were an exorcist?"

"Ah, I-I'm both. I'm studying to become an exorcist but I'm also keeping a garden. I supply the exorcist shop with herbs."

"Nii! Nii nii, nii!" The greenman speaks with the Earth King again, and it seems urgent. He waves and gestures and Shiemi thinks he might be pointing at her.

"But your garden is dying because you don't have time to do both."

That stare again. Shiemi feels like an exhibition object: not one admired but one stripped naked in a critically scrutinising spotlight. That stare is seeing things (she doesn't know what) and considering things (she doesn't want to know), and Shiemi trembles. His face is frosted glass, leaving no clues what lies behind it. The wound in his arm still bleeds but the Earth King doesn't seem to care. He brings his hand up to his face, absentmindedly, and starts chewing on his thumb claw.

For a fluttering moment Shiemi thinks he looks more like a big child than a demon king.

"I can take care of your garden", he says.

…he did say that, didn't he? Shiemi was too startled to listen, but she is quite sure he said that.

"Nii!" her familiar chirps, and looks like he is very proud.

Shiemi is not proud. Shiemi has done this once before, made a promise to protect Baa-chan's garden once before, and burnt children do not step into fire. She holds her breath and waits, and silence coats them once again, because there is more that needs to be said. His words are words that come with conditions.

"But then you have to do something for me in return", he adds, claw still between his teeth.

It isn't Shiemi that holds her breath this time, no, it's the forest and the bog themselves, and time has slowed almost to a stop. Only now does she realise her whole body is beating like a heart, beating madly and spinning in a million directions but her mind is at the centre of it, and her mind is still.

She will not make the same mistake twice.

"Entertain me."

Shiemi blinks.

"Eh?" Had he really… said that? "You mean like… playing games?"

A nod. Short. Simple. The Earth King wants to play games.

Shiemi's mind is crashing comets and blinding supernovas. When the flash is gone she sees, she _understands_. The demon king wants to play, like the ghost boy in the park. Hadn't Rin told her so, when she came to after the disastrous summer camp? That Amaimon had wanted to "play" with him?

The memory of the ghost boy floats in her reeling mind, the little boy and his big, grateful smile.

_'cause I've been sick ever since I was born I got scolded every time I tried to go outside an' play, so today was really fun! Thanks, Onee-san!_

What if… this big child sitting in the bog…?

"Not the kind of game you played with Rin, right?"

"No. You're too weak."

The statement is short and frank and stabs into the pit of her stomach. Shiemi's hands clench and her face burns red. She is weak, yes. But her resolve is strong.

"But other games are okay? Regular games?" she inquires, needing to be sure.

Another nod, and Shiemi's resolve grows stronger. If she could help the ghost boy, then…

"So I entertain you with games, and you tend my garden?"

"Yeah."

"In that case…" She draws a breath, fills with cedar fragrance and peat moss scent, and brings her thumb up to her teeth to bite. "I accept."

_Days fall like water drops in rusty rain barrels. All alike. All swallowed in the mass of one glassy eye that stares indifferently at heaven, waiting._

_Waiting for something other than a drop of rain._

_This story starts with one such drop._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N**
> 
> **Japanese honeysuckle** is a climber. It can't support itself on its roots and so clings to other trees to reach up to the sunlight. It might kill the ones it clings on, and thus it's parasitic.


	3. Light

She watches them. The raindrop days, the mirror eyes of rusty barrels. She watches all of them.

There is little else a sun can do but watch. And wait.

For what, she isn't sure. All that she can do is search and hope that it will find her, that one dewdrop day will see her fingers read the answer carved in Braille upon the skin of earth.

_how do you tell when a story ends?_

She hopes the earth has answers: if not, the story might not end at all. What then? What becomes of tales that fail to find their way, answers that are left lying?

_some stories should have ended long ago_

She keeps on watching: there is little else a sun can do. The sun wanders heaven with her lantern eye, pouring life over the plants and trees as her light shines down upon the earth.

_so bright it's blinding  
_

* * *

Long ago, the sun gave birth and nursed the infant oceans; then she nursed the soil, the air, and all that sprang to life beneath her radiant face. The sun gave life to all of them. That is why they are here, Shiemi thinks, quietly confiding to her pillow's cheek. When the sun arrives to kiss her sleeping eyes it is to nurse and nourish, and when Shiemi rises the sun lives in her gaze; to nourish, to love all that it touches.

That is why they all are here.

The sun lives in her mother, when Shiemi greets her in the kitchen after serving breakfast to her friends. Her chest is puffed with pride, her face is smiling like only a mother's face can smile, and her eyes are bright when she hands Shiemi a plate of omelette freshly from the stove.

"So, what will you be doing in school today?"

Shiemi thinks for a moment. Today is Wednesday: a day of many things. She will be having English grammar, history and social science, and something called arithmetics that she might need to ask Yuki-chan about. She has only been in school for a few days, after all.

Shiemi tells her mother what her day will be like and forgets her omelette until mother reminds her that food is necessary if she's going to be so busy. She will have cram school, too, and maybe study with friends, so she will be home late again.

"You have become a fantastic young woman, Shiemi. I hope you know how proud I am of you. Not only are you going to school for the first time but you're making friends!" Proud hands cup Shiemi's face, buttercup hands filled with sunshine. "I want you to enjoy this time as much as you can, Shiemi dear. Don't worry about the garden – I might not be as good with flowers as Baa-chan, but I'm doing pretty well. Spend as much time with your friends as you want."

Shiemi smiles: a flowerbud smile, one that keeps things to itself. Mother doesn't see what she sees. Shiemi never told her of the dökkálfr. She never told her of Nezumi-san either. Her mother is a sunshine sliver, warm and bright, but she doesn't speak with plants. She doesn't bring food to injured rats. She doesn't play with demon kings.

She doesn't see.

Baa-chan's garden is beautiful. But at night, it's magic. At night it is a blackbird trill, a bustling megalopolis in miniature: the spirits that the Earth King sent are chattering amongst themselves, milling unseen under canopies of healthy Hosta leaves and tilling gently through the earth (must make passage easy for the roots). At night they bury peat moss in the garden soil and tuck the flowers into bed, and Shiemi thinks she once saw Nii-chan giving directions to a stocky maple entling carrying the bucket with manure.

To help each other, to make each other happy…

That is why they all are here, Shiemi thinks – and smiles.

* * *

School makes her feel like a woodlouse: a tiny thing best kept curled up out of sight. There are so many people there that hiding feels like the best thing she can do – sometimes. And sometimes she forgets her fears, for school is a garden with every flower given voice and feet; they are all children of the same mother, there to grow, to help, to find their way.

It's magic. Like Baa-chan's garden. She is in the same class as Paku-chan and today they talk in the corridors between history and social science. She doesn't quite know what she says but that doesn't seem important. She speaks with someone and laughs with someone and that… That is important. Paku, Izumo, Rin, Yuki-chan, the boys from Kyoto – that is what's important.

She will catch up with them one day. She will be _strong_ , and help them grow, too. She will pay them back for everything they do for her.

_parasite_

"Eeeh? Shiemi-chan is leaving already?"

It is Shima that wonders, as cram school ends and books are laid to rest in satchels. His eyes pose other questions, too – few of them appropriate. He is an Italian orchid, Shiemi has decided: pink and bold and… obvious, she thinks. (and blushes) She sends him a smile and lifts Nii-chan back up on her shoulder.

"Mh! The weather has been really good so there's a lot to do in the garden. I'm sorry, but I won't be staying."

It's not a lie; lies taste like mouldy bread and Shiemi doesn't like them. (they nourish nothing) It's a truth that does no harm. Amaimon is no friend of the cram school students', and they… would not see what she sees. (broken arms, rattled skulls, and Rin under threat of execution: that is what they would see)

"No flower can compare to your beauty, Shiemi-cha- Ow! Are you just gonna let him hit me like that, Koneko?!"

Shiemi mutes a titter at Shima-san's hurt display. Ryuji-san was scary, at first: like a bee threatening to lose its temper and sting. He _is_ a bee, but not that kind of bee – she knows that now. Ryuji-san is a busy bee who works hard and means well.

"You brought it on yourself, Shima. When you can't control your desires someone else has to do it for you."

Koneko-san is more monk than Shima-san and Ryuji-san will ever be, Shiemi thinks. He provides calm and balance where none is to be found, however unassuming he may appear: like chamomille, except he smells like temple incense.

"See you tomorrow, everyone!" she calls out, one hand raised to wave and one searching her satchel for the key. Not the shop key: the old key. The key that grits its teeth and sheds its rusty hide each time a lock embraces it.

_as if it wished to speak but couldn't  
_

* * *

The bog waits. He waits. The bog is good at waiting: he is not. The King of Earth is nothing like the plants he governs, nothing like the patient roots that dream long months of winter, but that thought is one Shiemi keeps to herself. She finds him hanging from a cedar branch, upside down and coat tails fanning out beneath. He could have been a large bat, she thinks – and shudders. Bats are harmless beings, Shiemi knows that well, but she did frighten them in the garden arbor once when she was little. (not more than they frightened her)

The King of Earth drops down before her and somehow doesn't spill the contents of his take away box. (did he really say "gurun"? like a… sound effect?) He smells of cedar, resin, and something fresh that even summer heat can't wizen. It took a while, but Shiemi doesn't tense before him anymore: she only shudders for a moment, reminding herself of the bats that there's no real need to be afraid of.

It's rude to stare. Amaimon does it all the time but now it is Shiemi who can't avert her eyes: rice clings to his face and food scraps dot his fringe. (perhaps he eats upside down so it won't get on his clothes?) Her thoughts head to the satchel to rummage for tissue paper but her hands are slow to follow: Amaimon has already wiped his frost-glass face with the sleeves that cover his arms and hands.

He's so… childlike. (it reminds her of Rin, in a way)

"What do we do today?" he asks, and his voice holds life even if his face is blank and bare.

"Today I've brought these: this is ojami." The bean bags fall into her palm with familiar ease – five of them, cluttered close like frightened baby birds. "You use them to play otedame. You know otedame? It's an old game Baa-chan taught to me when I was little. Come! I have five for you, too."

The bog greets them like dear old friends now. They have their special log to sit on (the Earth King carried it there) and their special wineberry shrub (Nii-chan loves to climb in it), and in the log Shiemi hides a special vial of lemongrass extract to rub into her skin (mosquitoes hate it – although so does the Earth King). The log won't be serving them today: Shiemi picks a dry spot in the moss and seats herself on her knees. Amaimon follows, but not after he has planted a lollipop in his mouth. His wounds have long since healed (he didn't let her look at them) and all that's left to tell of them is the holes in his clothes. (Shiemi doesn't want to think where the other holes in his coat came from)

Shiemi's games are lonely children's games. It takes one to have fun but it takes two to laugh, and although she and Baa-chan played until Shiemi fell asleep up in her lap, one last question always found her lips: _Baa-chan, can I have a sister? Or a brother? Then we could all play nawatobi._

Amaimon is a lonely child. How she knows she isn't sure, knowing only that some questions don't need answers. The Earth King doesn't know how to play with others, or how to ask them nicely when he does; he has his pet goblin for company, and it is no more domesticated than its owner. (is it any different from having plants for friends?)

"The game comes with a song", she explains, once they have the bean bags strewn out in the moss before them. "You pick up the ojami and toss them in tune with the song. The pattern is quite complex but I'm sure you'll learn fast."

"How do you win?"

Shiemi has many pots for her plants. Some of them are plastic, some of them are pottery, and some of them are old. The old ones can have quite the attitude. (she won't call them snarky, but she thinks it) There is a pottery one with a particularly nasty edge. She doesn't know what cracked it, but every now and then it shows that unpleasant side and scrapes her fingers raw. It feels like this, she thinks, as the Earth King's question runs a disconcerting tingle down her spine. (some would have called it survival instinct)

It's not the first time that edge shows, and Shiemi has a reply already on her tongue.

"Well, there's no winning or losing in otedame", she says, and wonders if that blank look tilt of his head means he doesn't understand. (that's not the first time, either) "But of course, the one who can keep it up longer without dropping ojami is more skilled."

That seems to do the trick: Amaimon herds his ojami together with determination, and the tingle in Shiemi's spine fans out across her skin in triumph.

She may be weak, but she can see things others can't.

The song comes easy to him. He sings off key, but so does Shiemi, so she couldn't correct him anyway. (it's rhythm and lyrics that matter, and the cedars don't complain) Nii-chan is happy to chime in on the rhythm and keeps them on beat when Shiemi shows her pupil how to catch ojami on the back of his hand. (his hands are so much leaner than her calloused gardener palms)

The Earth King may not have a gardener's hands, but he has a gardener's touch. Those fingers can crush bone – and has, Koneko's arm can testify – but Shiemi sees. Those fingers know how to make a gentle nest around the bean bag, and how to calculate the tosses as minutely as a spider calculates her web: always that little bit higher than what Shiemi tosses, she notes with a smile.

Amaimon doesn't do that sort of thing. His frost-glass face hasn't moved a muscle since they first met, but each time she asks him he says he's having fun. Maybe he has. Maybe he just doesn't want to show it.

There is a shy thought trilling in Shiemi's throat – the kind that doesn't dare come out but knows it will burst forth eventually, like a hiccup building up to leap. She couldn't possibly be right, but what if she is?

"I win", Amaimon declares the moment Shiemi is so deep in thought she fails to catch her ojami.

Nii-chan pipes up a cheer from the school book satchel.

"Wow, you really are good at this!" Shiemi's compliment slides limply off the frosted glass expression, and then she can't hold it in any longer: "Uhm, you face – I noticed you never move your face. Is that… Is that because you don't want people to laugh at you?" Amaimon blinks, and that is all: the question missed its mark by kilometres. The silence lasts only for a second but the embarrassment in that second is enough to fill an hour. "I-I mean, I look so silly when I smile, so I try to keep my face serious, and I just wondered- S-sorry…!"

Shiemi shuts her eyes and throws her head into a bow to hide her burning cheeks. Now he will laugh at her, surely. Any moment now, the bog will ring with laughter.

"I don't like when people laugh at me."

Behind the pale blonde curtain, Shiemi's eyes snap open. She sits up in wonder and suddenly there is no embarrassment to tie her tongue: "Is that why you keep your face so still?"

No, it's not. Shiemi knows the moment the Earth King tilts his head that that is not the reason, long before he speaks: "Why would I move muscles that don't do anything?"

"Oh but they do!" she exclaims, hands becoming eager little fists against her plaited skirt. (where did that outburst come from?) "You can do lots of things with your face. You can show if you're happy or sad or angry, or if you like a person or not. It's good to let people know that."

The King of Earth is old – _how_ old, Shiemi doesn't know, but older than the oldest tree there is; it's strange to think he doesn't know such obvious things. No, on second thought, it's not. How would he know, if no one told him? There are many things that lonely children do not learn. Simple things. Things that others take for obvious.

"So it's like speaking." The verdict is a simple one; he didn't even chew on his claw before deciding. "Without words."

"Mh! It's called body language. It's like the language of feelings."

Amaimon doesn't even need to ponder this before he deadpans: "Your feelings are loud."

They are, they are: and his are quiet. Quiet like the shadowtide that lies in wait as sunset sinks towards the treetop line. Evening turns the bog to molten gold, swimming in the hum of insects and the waking calls of twilight predators. It is the hour when light is bent on trickery and your brain is its amusement park. It is the hour when nothing can be trusted.

_few things should ever be trusted_

Stories manifold will equate light with good, with clarity, while shaming darkness as the force of chaos and destruction. One must remember that stories are but stories, and stories lie. Light bends. Light fractures. Light is but a crystal ball illusion and, as with all illusion, what the eye sees and what it doesn't see is not important: only what it thinks it sees.

So it is with all things. So it is with the sun, who wanders heaven with her lantern eye, whetting shadow edges sharper as her light shines down upon the earth.

_so bright it's blinding  
_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  **Otedame** is a dying art in Japan. It's like juggling, except not at all. By tradition it's a women's game, and it's most often taught from grandmother to granddaughter. It's my headcanon that Baa-chan played this with Shiemi when she was little, and that Shiemi is pretty pro at this.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1lo2kSeFGY (in case you want to see how otedame works)
> 
>  **Nawatobi** is the same as skipping rope. (I guess the only way Shiemi could skip rope with Baa-chan was if they tied the other end of the rope to a tree or a door handle or something.)


	4. Kakurenbo

_All that lives, grows. All that lives, dies._

_All that lives births new life, and all that dies nurtures it_.

The sun gave birth to twins; that shouldn't be forgotten. Twins as different as night and day, one that gives and one that takes away.

Shiemi's friends are cannibals. She knows, because she lays their corpses in the compost pile, and once they rot she feeds them to their children: that is the way of things. That way the dead are with the living, and never truly gone. Baa-chan, Baa-chan's parents, Otou-san and Otou-san's parents… They are all still with their loved ones, never truly gone.

That is what they celebrate, this November spectacle called True Cross Academy festival.

* * *

To Shiemi, the festival is special – like Obon, or Christmas. It's a time for family, for gathering close and doing things together. It's a time when all three of them sit down to work, when old fingers teach young fingers and laughter simmers in the pot of herbal tea. When she was little she helped cut necks in the garden flowerbeds; when she was older she helped bind the ornaments at the table in the garden shed.

Now, her place is in the festival itself.

It isn't the feeling of being a woodlouse, she thinks, as she and Izami bleed the yamauba kimono with crimson paint. (Izami is a fantastic seamstress) It is the feeling of being an ant. She is a tiny thing, but part of something much, much greater. (thinking that tickles pleasantly in her stomach) The costume they are working on is part of the haunted house her class is working on, which is part of the festival that everybody is working on. Part of. Part of. Every little thing they do builds something bigger, together. It's a colour-bathing concrete colony, and Shiemi is part of it. A small part. (but the feeling is big)

Ants are strong, like weeds. Small and tough and never griping. Shiemi doesn't either. A smile paints sunshine on her face while, underneath her kimono, bruises paint her arms and back. She played tag with the King of Earth the other day. Even ants aren't tough enough for that.

The yamauba costume molds her body into horror. Izami has a bottle for everything, even making wounds and streaks of blood on Shiemi's face. (she likes to cosplay as a hobby, she says) She traps Shiemi's hair inside a net that hugs her scalp and fits a haystack wig on top of it. (it's warm, and itchy!) It's a good thing that she wears it, for Shiemi's own hair threatens to stand on end when she spots herself in the cracked mirror surface.

"Uwah, it looks so scary!" she squeals. (it is much too bright and happy for a yamauba – she will need to work on that) "You're so good at this, Izami-chan!"

"Thank you, Shiemi-chan." Izami is from Shikoku – Shiemi didn't understand her dialect at first – and is so pretty in her hime haircut that she looks almost like a doll. (it's strange to think she likes to dress as monsters) "You should try and walk around in it a bit: test the costume in action. It's good to know if there's anything we need to fix or change before tomorrow – and if this thing will hold or not", she says, and flicks the ping pong eye she fastened to the wig with wire. (Shiemi can feel it when it wobbles)

"Ooh, Shiemi-chan looks scary!" It is Paku, who comes with a whole box full of paper seals to decorate the outside of the haunted house. (ah, _Nori_ -chan _!_ she said Shiemi could call her Nori-chan!)

"We did a really good job", Izami agrees, and flicks her thumb up with a victorious grin. "Is it okay if she takes a break to walk a bit and test the costume out?"

"Of course." Nori is all smiles today: the festival becomes her. "Shiemi-chan has been working hard all day. Take a break and see what the others are doing. I think Izumo's class is setting up a planetarium somewhere by the paper shop, just before you reach the food stalls."

The walk there is a soda bottle - tickling, refreshing - and Shiemi enjoys every second of it. There is a pride inside her chest that bounces when wide-eyed students look at her, when their faces break into excited grins and they shout that they will definitely come to Class B's haunted house. There are painted signs being put up in every corner of the school and a broth of cheerful talk and hammered nails floating about the campus. This will be the best festival ever. She can't wait to show Kamiki her costume, even if feedback isn't something she expects. (Kamiki-san is a little reserved)

She scares the students working on the planetarium when she arrives. (it wasn't easy to find, the sign is not yet up) They are fewer than the ones working the haunted house, and much less enthusiastic for their task, but for one who has never seen a planetarium it is a marvel. (Shiemi never has) The ceiling is a firefly parade and the planets that are up glow spookily in the LED light. Kamiki isn't there. Her classmates aren't sure where she went but are happy to show Shiemi how they hope to make Saturn rotate before tomorrow. (she has never had an interest in electronics, but the boy who shows her is good at explaining)

When Shiemi sees the haunted house again, Kamiki has come to speak with Nori. Shiemi can't resist. She sneaks around the haunted house and in through the backdoor that is only for the personnel, all so that she can step out behind Nori.

"Paku! Behind you!"

Shiemi had never thought Kamiki could make a face like that. (best not to say that to her)

"The planetarium's great!" Shiemi chirps from within her haystack wig and wobbly ping pong eye. "I'll come and visit."

"Moriyama… Shiemi…?!"

Shiemi had not thought Kamiki could make a face like that either. (yes, definitely best not to say that) It seems like Kamiki will leave to study, though, so Shiemi waves her off along with Nori.

"Study hard! Come and visit our haunted house, okay! I'll scare you~"

Kamiki's swift step makes a stiff hiccup, then, and she tosses her farewell over her shoulder: "Ah, shut up! Unlike you I'm busy, you know!" She whips her head around and stalks off, and… it seems somehow familiar. Her words, the sight of her walking down that street…

"Uhm, sorry about that", Nori apologises on her friend's behalf and wakes Shiemi from her ponderings.

"No, it's fine", she smiles, and hopes she doesn't look too flustered. Kamiki doesn't mean it: she's a chestnut, thick hide and thorny spikes. It still hurts, but she doesn't mean it. "Everyone really does seem busy. Even Yuki-chan declined to go to the dance party."

Yuki-chan. Shiemi doesn't know what kind of flower he would be. When she was little she would have said he was an oak tree, strong and dependable. (she admired him so much it's embarrassing) Yuki-chan wasn't always so, Shiemi knows. He was small and weak, like her: afraid of everything, like her. He still is afraid, for his brother's sake, that he won't be enough. Nobody is perfect, not even Yuki-chan, and when she saw that… things became clear.

People grow. Over a lifetime they grow, from seed to sapling to tree, and Shiemi simply has more growing still to do.

"Huh? Didn't Okumura-kun invite you?" Nori seems confused.

Shiemi is even more confused: "Rin? No, he didn't?"

"But, some time ago, during lunch time…?"

"Ah, I see. No, Rin and I had a talk about Yuki-chan, and the fact that he's been tired lately", Shiemi explains and paints a smile on her lips. The truth is… the truth is… "We thought it would be a good idea for him to go to the dance party."

The truth is that trees can fall ill. Trees can fall ill and Shiemi isn't sure that Yuki-chan is well. She can't say what it is, that smile he showed her when he declined her invitation, but deep down she knows he isn't well. Yuki-chan is busy but he is more than that. He is pushing everyone away. (like Amaimon when he was wounded)

"A-ah, but like I said, he declined. Rin seemed really upset when I told him about it, too. I hadn't expected such a reaction: he just took off." Shiemi flops her bloodied kimono sleeves dejectedly. She would like to apologise, but she doesn't know what for. "I don't know why he flared up like that…"

Nori puts her cardboard signs away. Shiemi isn't sure what sort of flower she is, either. A small one, nothing bawdy, with a gentle but pleasant fragrance. Nori straightens with a friendly smile, and Shiemi knows what she is: a Linnaea. A Linnaea is like ambience and coffee shops.

"Okumura-kun probably intended to ask Shiemi-chan to the dance, but couldn't say it?"

"Eh?!"

Nori's face grows kinder still, like demure flower bells sipping literature in shady forest nooks. "Shiemi-chan, between Okumura-kun and sensei, who do you like?"

"Who do I like…?" Comparison has never touched Shiemi's mind. She likes both of them, of course! But Nori seems to mean something else and she can't tell what it is. "Both of them. They're important fr-friends to me!"

"Umm, it's not that kind of like?" Nori almost takes on the colour of a Linnaea, unsure how to explain. She puts her fingers together (index index, thumb thumb) and shapes a heart. "The romantic kind…"

This… is also… familiar? But Shiemi can't stop the laughter bubbling up her throat. The romantic kind? _Rin_? "Fufufu love!? It's still too early for me!"

It is. But words are pollen. They spread, flower to flower, and when they meet a compatible one they make thoughts grow. In Shiemi's mind, they grow. In cram school class, they grow. She can't stop watching Rin and his chestnut attitude towards his classmates. (he's so like Kamiki suddenly) He does seem upset with something. But love… That is so unlike Rin.

Rin is an important friend. Is that not enough?

* * *

Shiemi feels like a mulberry tree sensing summer. All day, Nori's pollen words sprout thoughts inside her head. ( _pop, pop, pop_ like breaking leaf buds) Shiemi barely knows what she eats for supper. Her mind is locked in orbit and she knows that yes, she must resolve this. It was she who caused it, whatever it truly is, and she must set it right. Tomorrow she will talk to Rin and sort out what upsets him.

"Hey, you! Are you listening?!"

Mother is busy, too. The festival makes everybody busy and chestnut prickly. Shiemi apologises: she was lost in thought and no, she wasn't listening.

"Oh… Well, the school festival is when our shop will make a great deal of its earnings." Mother sets her bowl down on the table, not to distract herself from negotiating. It is a business negotiation: Shiemi hears the numbers and calculations written neatly in her voice. "For the flower arrangement, I'll be troubled if you don't help out from tomorrow. Since your granma isn't around this year…"

Shiemi's chewing ceases. For the first time in hours Nori's pollen words stop swirling, and her mind is a still pond in a storm. How could she forget? She was so busy all day and forgot that she'll be even busier the coming days!

Last year, Baa-chan sighed and said she was too old to put the decorations up inside the school: her knees were old, and too much like the gnarly orchard apple trees that creak when even tiny sparrows land in them. Next year Shiemi should help put up the flowers, she said, and smiled as sly old foxes do.

How right she was.

"I'm sorry! But, but, it's already been decided that I'll be the ghost – my class is making a haunted house attraction – so please allow me to leave several times in the middle!" The words are out in a garbled waterfall but somehow mother understands them. That will be okay, she says, and Shiemi breathes a happy sigh.

Thoughts sprout again, as Shiemi does the dishes over the humble kitchen sink. Swirling eddies. Frothing worries. She has to make the flower arrangements this year, there is no other way around it. (and work shifts as ghost in the haunted house) (and visit the planetarium) (and eat at Rin's food stall) (and sort out this mess of festival evening dates) Shiemi lets her eyes fall closed, breathes deeply, and exhales. Yes, she will do it. She can. Ants are strong, and tough, and never griping.

_to help each other, to make each other happy: that is why they all are here_

One more. There is one more who needs her help, before lights are out and sleep can claim her listless body. The rusty key is calling and the bag of lonely children's toys is ready for departure. Shiemi's bedroom floor is swaying on its feet and the door is barely steady either, but Shiemi reaches it. She turns the key.

It grits its teeth and wails.

* * *

A jacket would have been a good idea, Shiemi thinks. Autumn days are pleasant, much more so than humid summer, yet night already tunes its song for winter. The sun looks tired when she peeks in through the trees, and the evening gauze of mist is rising out of moss and soil. (it's so beautiful she stops a moment just to watch) It will be chilly in the bog, Shiemi thinks, and pulls her shawl closer round her neck.

The Earth King doesn't want to play. Like a sullen orchid stem that won't have anything to do with flowers, he sits on his haunches and does nothing more. Shiemi has suggested all the games she knows and all the games they've played, but none is to his liking.

"I'm bored", is all he says, and looks at her like he expects her to do something about it. (well, she did promise she would)

"I know", she says, and all she wants is to go to bed and sleep but she has a _promise_ to fulfil, and promises are important. Shiemi rubs her eyes and speaks: "Is there anything you want to play? I think I've run out of ideas."

A silence coats the bog, then. It is more like winter cold than summer heat, more like prickling little frostbites down her spine. Shiemi's heart is gasping and she doesn't know why, only that it's… _familiar._ For a moment. Then she blinks, and it is gone.

Amaimon seems to notice nothing, although with his indifferent looks one can never tell. "Let's play hide-and-seek", he decides.

"Okay, we'll play hide-and-seek. Who hides?"

"You hide. I'll count to a hundred."

Shiemi settles for a slow-paced jog. Her heart is back to normal, whether that is a good or a bad sign. What was before… Stress, maybe? With all she has to do these days, wouldn't she be stressed out, too?

She jogs until the counting monotone is but a blur among the trees. Ground vegetation in cedar woods is rather barren, so she must aim for better terrain to hide. Forests have layers, like onions. Each one with their special personality. Humans aren't unlike onions, either, Shiemi muses as she strides across the moss and needles. (must save her breath a bit) They have layers, one atop the other: some of them more personal than others. (she can't help but worry over Yuki-chan)

Some of them more personal than others, and some of them quite unexpected, too. Shiemi has never been this deep within the forest before. She had no idea this layer of vegetation was here. (it's like finding a new and unexpected friend) Cedar soil is red from needles; this soil is red from iron oxide. Cedar forest vaults stand high on skyward pillars, spacious and prone to playing tricks with echoes; this forest envelopes, hushing sky and ground like a magician keeping secrets. The vines grow thick in here, like drapes; they'll be good for hiding. Shiemi doesn't recognise them but thinks immediately of kudzu, and how the climber carpets everything it comes in contact with. How it hides things. How it buries things.

_nothing wants to be buried_

This place is nothing like her garden arbor or the wise old cedar forest round the bog. This forest is silent. This forest feeds on sunlight, feeds on all that lives inside of it and hides their bones in carpetlands of moss and greedy vines; feeds… slowly. Grows, slowly.

Silence, crawling slowly down the watchful trunks the deeper in she goes, eating tingling nerve ends underneath her skin so slowly she can feel each one of them flicker and go out like broken light bulbs. Shiemi doesn't dare to breathe, doesn't dare to turn around yet that is all she wants to do. She wants to go back but she can't. (there is no questioning that knowledge) She hugs Nii-chan closely to her chest, and something in her ripples. Even her familiar is silent.

There are places that are old; this place is older. If it ever had a name it has been long forgotten. If any language used to speak it, it has been lost from living minds. There are crumbled stones, half-buried in the vines and in the roots, bearing symbols that held meaning, once. They might have spoken it, before time gouged their tongues out. Before these woods fell silent. Before this place forgot its name.

_nothing wants to be forgotten_

There are other things than stones half-buried here. There are other things than woods that keep the silence. Shiemi's shoes touch rusty iron daggers that dream vicious dreams among the roots. Her eyes brush tapestry of wizened bone that wishes only to wake up. This is not a place for games, she realises. (it's like swallowing ice) This is not a game and Amaimon isn't playing. (she couldn't entertain him: she broke their deal) These trees are fed on flesh and the red soil isn't red from iron oxide.

A crack of breaking twigs – in her mind or in her ears, Shiemi doesn't know, and her body doesn't care. Her heart explodes. Lightning bolts tear through her bones and she _runs_.

There is nowhere to run to, but panic doesn't care. The climber walls condense to tunnel paths and she races through them without stopping, without thinking; her breath is gasps and her head is growing light. Paths split and she chooses one at random, flashes of large stone slabs – carved with runes undone by age, cracked and soiled with sacrificial dreams – flowing past the corners of her eyes.

This place is not a forest.

It's a maze.

The left path is wrong (she knows?) but Shiemi's gasping feet decide to go there anyway. She runs, she floats; solid feet on liquid ground that she can't feel but it must be there because she isn't falling. Yet. She isn't falling yet but Shiemi doesn't wonder why that thought is in her head; there are too many thoughts in there already, they thrash and throb against her forehead and she's getting dizzy. She wants to stop and turn around, stop and look for her lost breath because her heart is signalling for air in Morse. ( _ta-dump, ta-ta, ta-dump-ta_ ) But there's no stopping, she realises.

Her feet aren't hers to move.

Shiemi wants to scream then, but her throat is not responding either. Nothing does. Her mind is crying stop, her body is a raft in riptide and there is only forward motion, foliage prison walls, and things that wait.

_they have waited a long, long time_

There's things that sleep in nightmares, things that carve out nests in the corner of the eye and

_wait_

There's things that live on stuttered heartbeats, things that watch and starve and

_wait_

There's things that wait for her to stop (oh god don't stop) and Shiemi is on fire; tears burn her eyes, panic burns her lungs. Run. That's all there is: _run_. Past strangled rocks, past moss-clad stumps, past crossroad corners and silent, solid, solemn walls of vegetation. Roots arch up before her rippling eyes but vanish when she stumbles into them. (are they real? is this real?) Somewhere somehow sometimes she thinks directions might be running circles in her skull because she can't think straight and her mind is swimming two feet ahead. She wobbles: there's no ground beneath the roots, no oxygen in the air, and the maze walls clench like a throat about to swallow. (those aren't trees either, are they?) It will swallow. Soon. She knows it. She knows, and she can't stop.

She knows before it happens: a stumble. Rock or root or something else – Shiemi is unsure of the difference. Her fall is heavy but her thoughts are light falling through the leaves and scattered shards on moss green eyes that chase delirium in the swirling air.

The roots are strangely warm… like… breath…

"Nii! Nii!"

Shiemi's eyebrows furrow and she tries to remember that something isn't right. Something's slipping and it's slipping fast as fingers twitch and fail to hold the breath from lips turned gasping blue. (no, that's not it) That's not what slips. She knows what's really slipping.

"Nii-chan…" Green eyes grasp the word in flight, an unblurred moment as the greenman frantically pats her cheek: it smells like chlorophyll and sunshine. It's a nice smell. A nice smell for a horrible end. " _Maybe… I'll meet Baa-chan…_ " Shiemi smiles; and blurs, and all is… blinding bright…

"Nii-chan…"

* * *

_Once upon a thousand times, their stories ended,_

_moored to nameless soil and living walls._

_All forgotten._

_All buried._

_All waiting_

_for the story to be told again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yamauba** is the mountain witch Shiemi is dressed up as.
> 
>  **Kakurenbo** is hide-and-seek.
> 
>  **True Cross Academy festival** is, most likely, a Dia de los Muertos celebration. The time frame matches (late October - early November), the painted skull decorations are a dead (a-haha) give-away, and the stage Mephisto makes his entrance on speaks for itself.
> 
>  **Mulberry trees** have a reputation of leafing late in spring, but they compensate by leafing very fast once the temperature does go up. "Overnight" or "you can hear the buds unfolding" are popular things to say about it. (Don't look at me, I have no idea if that is true or just exaggeration.)
> 
> Now it will be a while until I have time to write the next chapter, so enjoy your cliffhanger. ];9


	5. Fire

_there are stories that should never have been told_

_and yet_

_no story wants to end_

Light. Blinding. Dancing. Floating. The world is a mirror glass of light and she is misty breath upon its surface. Light drips, dizzily swimming: chasing, merging, morphing around and within. There's the sparrows in the garden, eating seeds of sunflower from her hand – no, no it's not. Those are Baa-chan's hands, pine root hands showing how to gently, gently cut the plums in half and out plops the kernel – not a kernel: a leaf, fresh green, from Nii-chan when he's summoned…

In and out, Shiemi drifts. In and out of molten memories, daydrop water pearls in rusty rain barrels. Warm. They're soft and warm, summer breath wrapping her in promises of sleep and satisfaction. It's autumn harvest and the smell of fragrant grapes hangs low – the red ones sweet, the green ones plump and fat. (like plant lice)

_no one harms Shiemi's friends_

The grape becomes a ping pong eye, and Nori-chan is fastening it on her yamauba costume. And Kamiki-san is there… and she whips her head around and stalks away, and… hasn't this already…?

_how do you tell when a story begins?_

All of it. All of it has already–

Heavy. A tug, not floating, not dancing – plummeting, she's heavy and she's _plummeting_ …

The mirror breaks.

Shiemi breaks. Her heart thunders in her ears (does it?), shoots lightning through her legs (does it, really?); her eyes are frightened sparrows darting 'round the airy forest glade and she is… she is…

Amaimon.

The King of Earth is there, and Shiemi freezes. He caught up. He captured her. She has to get away, before he– Shiemi can't move, and the mirror breaks again, clattering shards all cold and biting: the forest, the screaming silence, head getting lighter and limbs heavier. Is it…? Is she still…? No. No, this is not that forest. This place is a mother, a bright and kindly creature cradling all her little children in her foliage arms.

"What happened?" She didn't speak. Shiemi knows she didn't speak. And yet Amaimon turns, and she can see what he's been doing: a mud golem, half-formed, on legs that disappear in clouds of bright blue flowers.

"You died."

No.

Yes.  
_  
No_ – no, she wants to say, but the word is stuck within, an ugly, wormy dandelion root that won't leave the soil.

"I'm… dead?"

"No. I said you died, not that you're dead."

All things die. All things die and then they are dead. Shiemi wants to clench her fists and scream, crack that frost-glass face that never moves, never feels, never mirrors any care that she's afraid or hurt. But she's dead (she is… dead) and dead things have no voice. No mouth. No hands. Fine threads (prison bars) surround her on all sides, veins belonging to the Chinese lantern plant that clasps her spirit gently in its paper fingers, one cobweb wall away from death.

More memories stir. Glassy dewdrop pictures from another time, another place, another lantern flower.

"I did this with the souls on the ghost train…" To help. To save. The memory snaps snakebite guilt into Shiemi's heart and she can't believe she doubted him. "Thank you."

Amaimon doesn't seem to understand her words. (how does she even speak?) His head tilts, and the lollipop between his lips is still.

"For saving me", Shiemi clarifies. If dead things could smile, she would have smiled.

"I didn't save you." His eyes are dull (they are bark and cliffside rock) and yet they cut (like broken nails and rust). His gaze is not on her: it is a narrow miss, a dagger thrown that grazes past and buries in the ground beneath her. "He did."

Amaimon has not summoned any Chinese lantern plant; Nii-chan has. Without command, without his Tamer's wish, and Shiemi wants to wrap him in a brackish hug with all her heart. But she's dead, and dead things have no arms. No face. No body. And Shiemi breaks a second time.

"But… Wh-when I… Amaimon, I-I need a body. When I run out of energy to keep Nii-chan here, I will…!"

"Your body is almost done." Amaimon adds the second pebble eye to the golem's mud clot face.

"That…?" Shiemi stares.

It is not so much a body as a mismatched snowman substitute by kindergartener hands.

"Ah, uhm, that's… That's very kind of you, Amaimon, but…" There must be some way to tell him she doesn't want to look like that.

"I'm not doing it for you." The snarl coils all the way out to his lips, coils around his fangs and lathes his tongue with scorn. "I have to keep you alive. Older Brother kills me if I kill any of his students."

Shiemi breaks for the last time. There is no more to break, no light left to blind her into thinking Amaimon is anything but this. Such a stupid girl, thinking they had a connection, thinking a demon king could care about a weak human with weak roots and weak, useless feelings, just a dumb little girl who thought she could make him happy, who thought…

Shiemi wants to curl up and disappear, tightly curl the lantern petal shroud until no laughing trickster light can find her. But she's dead, and dead things have no tears to cry. No breaths to hiccup. No place to hide.

Regrets, regrets – the only token dead things keep, the only thing still binding them unto the living. What will her friends think when she returns? (if she returns) What will her mother think? She's been so stupid, she should have understood, should have told them, should have should have should have–

The world tilts and sways on its slender stalk as Amaimon takes Nii-chan in his hands. The golem body draws nearer, that hideous prison she'll be living in until she dies. Shiemi whimpers, braces herself, regrets all things she still hasn't–

"Fuse."

"Wh… what?"

"It's like possession", Amaimon clarifies. "You have to make the body yours."  
_  
Days fall like water drops in rusty rain barrels. All alike._

Until, one day, when the barrel is too full and the rust has eaten much too greedily, the drop comes that changes everything.

"I won't."  
_  
when one story ends, another begins_

Sometimes decisions are made and sometimes decisions make themselves. Sometimes, decisions change everything. The glade knows it, silent and aghast; Nii-chan knows it, like high voltage through the bond shared with his Tamer. Even Amaimon seems to know, as he stops short before the golem, that something, just now, changed.

"Why not?"

Because this isn't right. Because the barrel burst, flowing over not with water but with oil, and that oil is burning. Shiemi is burning, and there's tinder to be found in every thing the barrel vomits forth: little things, years and years of them, and little things can't be set in words so easily.

She barely even notices how Nii-chan grows behind her: and grows, and grows.

"My body didn't look like that." That is easier. That is now, here, and urgent: the little things will have to wait for now.

Amaimon looks first at the golem, then at her.

"What does that matter? It has the same parts."

Memories resurface, sunny days at forest bogs and (they burn) playing tag and (they snap) little roots meandering the ground and (they CRACK) Shiemi's mind is wild with thoughts that have no names, and all she knows is you don't treat people like this. You don't treat _anyone_ like this.

"Of course it matters! I didn't look like that! I want _my_ body!"

The change ripples, deepens, drop by drop to widen cracks carved out by patient rain. Nii-chan towers high above the Earth King's golem now, twice as tall and thrice as broad; his hide has gone from leafy green to red, to gold, to autumn fire and saffron blaze, and from within the thicket rises oaken panzer plates to guard his arms, his legs, his back and chest.

"This one's better than your old body", Amaimon persists. "It's stronger, and its legs aren't so squishy."

It's fortunate that dead things can't blush. Or pale.

"What do you know about my legs?!"

"I carried you. Your legs were squishy, like the mochi Older Brother eats. It made me want to chew on them."

Shiemi breaks. Differently. Not broken but breaking, not crushed by any outside force but fighting back against it with that unfamiliar battering ram called Anger.

"You're awful! You're a terrible person and you're mean – even when people are nice to you!" Oil drops, teardrops – that feeling burns a thousand screaming colours _._ "So what if my legs are chubby and squishy?! It's better than looking like a mud golem!"

"Why are you so noisy? Just fuse with your body."

"That's not my body and _I will not fuse with it!_ "

Even weak plants want to grow. They fight for that, in spite of everything – in spite of fragile leaves and roots that won't sustain their weight, they _fight_ , with everything they've got and more, and no one has the right to step on those struggling roots.

No one has the right to step on her.

Behind her Nii-chan is a titan, an armoured foliage samurai with helmet horns and a naginata bladed with the lacework skeleton of mouldered leaves, sharper than piano wire and haunted with a dusk-sun glow.

Amaimon burns, too. When finally that frost-glass cracks there's scorching lava underneath, she sees it in his eyes – the blue gives way to yellow, gives way to pupils thin enough to cut her head clean off her neck. The ground beneath them shudders, a trembled, whispered plea for her to bow her will to his before he buries both of them alive. (good thing she's dead)

"Fuse", he rasps, voice snagging – tearing – on the bared tips of his fangs.

"No." Shiemi is scared. But she is angry, too, and anger feels much better. "You can't hurt me."

"I can hurt your friends."

"They're cram school students. Sir Pheles will protect them." If what he said was true, if the older brother is indeed the chairman of the school…

The King of Earth is breaking.

"Then I'll hurt your mother."

All at once, the Earth stops turning and splits the sky from sun to moon.

He wouldn't do that, would he?

He would. The flimsy fairy tale has ended and reality has never worn a crueller face than that broken frost-glass mask of his.

"…I will fuse."

It is the voice of tired stalks that bend, of leaves that wilt and flowers bowing heads for lack of strength to face the sun.

She will fuse, for her mother's sake. For everyone's sake: everyone's but hers. (for that, at least, she's reliable) Nii-chan doesn't move when Amaimon pulls the Chinese lantern to the golem's chest; his leaf-hide rustles menace, but he doesn't move a limb. He has seen Shiemi's heart, has felt the sun's warmth in her hands: he loves her enough to act without her orders, and respects her enough to not defy them.

_when one story ends_

It's a mistake. She knows at first rasping grasp out of the flower. (something is cut; something _bleeds_ ) Sensations slip and waft away, slip like breath and tears and leaden gasps she left among the hungry roots.

_when one story ends_

She throws her being at the golem, knowing nothing of how fusion and possession work. She wants to live: that, she knows. Every particle of whatever she is wants to live.

_when one story ends_

There is nothing there. There's nothing in the golem to hold on to, nothing save the dark that pulls her under, grave-maw waiting to devour her at the bottom of the drowning void.

That same rush, fall, plummet – Shiemi's world is screaming vertigo when soothing sapling warmth reconnects her with the living. The King of Earth has pulled her out, has grafted soul and lantern plant together once again and Shiemi is no longer dying. (dead, not dying) Nii-chan chirps and purls with worry, fussing like a mother hen and sprouting pretty little leaves around the lantern bulb for her to feel protected and at ease. He is no longer any towering redwood giant: the burst of energy is past, his Tamer must conserve all power she can spare. She will last longer with no body to sustain, but whether longer will be long enough is a decision not for them to make. __  
  
Amaimon is not pleased. He sits cross legged on the ground, sullen and withdrawn like spikemoss shutting itself to an outside world that won't comply with its demands. It's on Shiemi's tongue to word out "thank you" but she doesn't. Those cinders haven't ceased to smoulder yet.

"What happened?" she asks instead. Again. No matter what or where she always seems to be that clueless little girl who's tossed around by forces outside of her own.

"The body wasn't compatible. It seems you won't be able to inhabit it."

There is more to it than that. Amaimon shows no worry outwardly but bites his thumb nail like a man who tries to gnaw his way out of a cage.

That is his problem, not hers: Shiemi has her own cage to escape and she may just have found a hole.

"Then the best match is my own body. If it's still in the forest, we could– Stop! You're hurting yourself!"

Amaimon has no thumb nail left, and only half a thumb. The sound of teeth that grate on bone is sickening, yet he merely glances at the bleeding stump before he puts his other thumb nail to his mouth.

"What is dead remains dead", he dismisses. "You need a living body: a human body."

The world is ice and powdered screams.

No.

Never.

"I won't do that. It doesn't matter who you threaten. I won't do that."

"Then you'll die", he says, with the simplicity of a universe collapsing.

"I suppose I will."

There is a crow in Baa-chan's garden: an old and clever thing that likes strawberries and problem solving. Most of all she likes solving problems that give her access to the strawberries Shiemi has tried desperately to save. There came one spring when she had had enough: she replanted all the strawberries in garden crates and carried them inside the conservatory. The look that old crow gave her then was long and steady, full of bile and barbed curses, and not unlike the look the Earth King shoots her now. It is a glare that wishes to pull every bone out of her flesh until she gives up her defiance on a plate of pain and raw defeat.

Perhaps she would have, once. Not now. She is not surrendering an inch of _anything_ to him now. If she dies, then so be it.

If she dies, then so will he.

It is a thought that uproots every other in her mind and throws them to the sky in one big spray of jumbled comprehension. She who grew up powerless and frail holds this most terrible control over him: and he, who was born with power humans only dream of, is helpless for the first time in his life.

The golem shatters. It is a violent, explosive crash that all but snaps Shiemi's nerves. (if she'd still had them) The Earth King's blood-stained face is cracking once again, is fear and fire in an ashen frame and the ground is trembling in anticipation of the burst that will be the end of all.

Then he's gone.

Shiemi holds in breaths she doesn't have. He'll come back. (any moment now) He'll come back… But heart-stop minutes trickle past and no Earth King is in sight. He has gone somewhere else. To exhaust his anger and frustration on an enemy that can be fought with fists and claws.

Silence fills the glade with dandelion down, with weightless, soft assurance that whoever dwells in there is safe and cherished. The flowers know it, too: they are water lilies floating on a verdant pool, cascade colours singing at the top of every petal's lungs and trickling vibrant greens into the sea of stems that bear them up. It is beautiful, and not a common thing at all, to find a place that knows how to love.

Amaimon's anger mars the tranquil glade, clumps of heavy, lifeless brown like booted footsteps crushing all the greenery beneath. Anger…

Anger is nothing like Shiemi's usual self. It is like stinging nettle, except she knows plenty of things to do with stinging nettle. What does one do with anger?

"You felt it, didn't you?"

He did. Not in words or images but Shiemi feels the greenman's affirmation through the lantern flower's walls.

"It was so different", she muses, a botanist's attempt to classify an unknown species. "It felt alive, as if it was its own being. But it came from me. Not like a sprout or anything like that – it was sharp. It burnt. It was…"

Like fire. Plants grow the world, grow the life that births all other life. Fire only knows how to devour and destroy. (it's like a demon, she thinks)

Shiemi never liked it. Fire was a pretty thing to look at, after spring cleaning the garden, when piles of leaves and branches sent their ashes to the sky. The black scar in the grass was never pretty.

Not pretty, but necessary.

"Sometimes you need fire", she murmurs. When you need change. When you need to burn away the old so something new can grow. "But you need to know what to burn and what to leave."

Does the phoenix know, she wonders. Each time it's devoured in fire, does it know what will come next? What it will turn into? If Shiemi were to burn and be reborn, what flower would she be? A chestnut, like Kamiki? A Linnaea, like Nori…?

A searing stitch of flame burns through the girl within the lantern flower prison. It is not anger. And there will come no rebirth.

"I wonder how the festival went…" she whispers, as beloved faces drift into her mind and curl her burning edges in against themselves. So many faces she will never see again, so many faces that will grieve when she is– "It was my first Academy festival…"

Nii-chan soothes her as best he can, sending waves of comfort and compassion to her flower cell. Gentle curtain leaves embrace the bulb and hush the prying light, shielding seedling roots that will never touch the soil.

Dead things have no tears. (but sadness is immortal)

Sadness is the cruel twin of joy. It is a rotten fruit that won't release the branch that birthed it, a baby bird afraid of falling that would rather claw and bite the tree to death – sometimes. And sometimes it's the branch itself that won't let go, afraid to lose those last vestiges of what once was happiness despite the rot that feeds upon its warmth.

Afraid.

She is. Afraid to fall, afraid of letting go; afraid to die, to lose her family, to lose her friends. To leave them nothing but this sadness steeping heart and mind in lead.

_nothing wants to be forgotten_

_that is why_

_the dead are never truly gone_

That is what they celebrate, this October spectacle called True Cross Academy festival, when memories of loved ones breathe within the hearts of those still living. Shiemi will be with them, as Baa-chan was with her. As the dead plants with the new ones. As everything that ever lived and died is part of what came after, and never truly gone.

Grief takes her full cycle, from phoenix fire to rot to lighting fear aflame.

And then she knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original plan was to use the dreamy writing only for the dream/life flashback part, and revert to regular prose and past tense when Shiemi woke up. Eh, but things rarely go according to plan for me. When I started typing this chapter it continued naturally in the present tense dreamy style - I could have changed it during editing, but I found that some things just didn't translate well to regular prose and so I decided that, if it doesn't bother you too much, I'd continue writing it dreamy.
> 
>  **Chinese lantern plant** you'll recognise if you've read or viewed the omake about the demon train that steals the souls of its passengers and takes them to Gehenna. Their mission was only to exorcise the train but Rin and Shiemi wanted to save the souls/ghosts trapped in it, so what Shiemi did was ask Nii-chan to summon a Chinese lantern plant and gather the souls/ghosts up in its flowers. It was wicked cool!
> 
>  **Naginata** is a weapon traditionally weilded by females in Japan: it looks like a spear with a sword blade instead of a spear tip, basically. I'm a big fan of the Dark Souls games, and if you think you see a similarity between Giant!Nii-chan's weapon and Aldrich's then it's not just your imagination. ^v^
> 
>  **Spikemoss** is a peculiar plant that deals with draught by curling up into a grey, withered tangle until it comes in contact with water again: then it unfolds and becomes green.
> 
>  **I'm glad that Shiemi got angry at Amaimon** in the latest chapters of the manga. What still feels off to me was that she was angry because "she" was getting her friends hurt by being taken hostage by Amaimon. Reality check: if somebody takes you hostage, everything that happens is that person's fault. You are angry at that person for being a violent jerk to your friends but most of all for being a violent jerk to _you_. We already know Shiemi would do anything for her friends: what I want to see in terms of development is her getting a sense of _her own value_ and being angry _for her own sake_.


End file.
